Fifty years later, Scripps Ranch resident Roy Gjertson still remembers the happy glow he felt that Sunday morning — and how quickly it vanished.

Before making an official announcement, the U.S. Post Office Department had sent advance word to Gjertson. In a national competition that drew nearly 1,000 entries, his design had been selected for a postage stamp marking the battle of Gettysburg’s 100th anniversary.

His winning entry showed two soldiers locked in combat. Large letters spell out “GETTYSBURG;” smaller text notes “Civil War Centennial.”

That, at least, was the intent.

On this fateful morning, the triumphant artist and his 15-year-old son, Dennis, were at the family breakfast table, reading This Week, then a popular magazine tucked inside Sunday newspapers. Under the headline “Which Gettysburg Stamp Do You Like?” the magazine reproduced pictures of several finalists.

Artist Roy Gjertson in his studio at Scripps Ranch home in San Diego on Thursday.

By the time the stamp was printed, though, the error was corrected. Today, this is arguably the most memorable stamp issued during the country’s Civil War centennial of 1961-1965. Last month, the U.S. Postal Service issued another Gettysburg stamp to mark the 150th anniversary of the epic three-day clash in Pennsylvania. Based on an 1887 lithograph, this one depicts the savage climax of Pickett’s Charge.

A strong image, but can it match the 1963 stamp’s impact?

“All hell broke loose,” Gjertson said.

A stamp divided

A native Minnesotan, Gjertson served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II as a radio operator and gunner aboard B-24 bombers. When the war ended, he returned to civilian life and his first love: drawing. After graduating from art school, he took a series of jobs as an illustrator for aviation companies in the Los Angeles area.

In 1969, he was hired as an illustrator and designer for General Dynamics in San Diego. During two decades there, he drew everything from B-24s to space shuttles to cruise missiles, the images enlivening pamphlets, proposals, reports, in-house publications. He also found time to illustrate several books and design another stamp, this one focusing on the Mariner 10, the probe launched toward Mercury and Venus in 1973.

Nice stamp. No ruckus.

Back in 1963, though, critics assailed Gjertson for his spelling and his artistic vision.

When the Post Office announced its competition for the Gettysburg stamp in 1962, the artist was immersed in Bruce Catton’s Civil War histories. “I was attracted by the subject,” he said. “It hit me very hard.”

But he had disliked earlier Civil War stamps, which presented a single generic soldier — could have worn blue or gray — aiming at a distant, unseen target.

“That just didn’t do it for me,” he said. “No one was getting into the real deep part of this struggle. It was brother against brother, in some cases. I wanted to show that mortal struggle, that force, without being prejudicial to either side.”